


The True Tale of Lambert and the Grave Hag

by Miah_Arthur



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angry Lambert (The Witcher), Angst and Tragedy, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Murder, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Minor Lambert (The Witcher)/Eskel (The Witcher), Some Humor, Winter At Kaer Morhen, unlikely friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26873926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miah_Arthur/pseuds/Miah_Arthur
Summary: Geraltgets a bard following him around, making him famous and wealthy. What does Lambert get? Cheated. Imprisoned. And a contract he can't refuse if he wants to make it to Kaer Morhen for the winter. It's bullshit. Utter bullshit.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 62
Collections: Sordid Saovine - The Witcher Halloween Event





	The True Tale of Lambert and the Grave Hag

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Maimat and Hircine_Taoist for their beta work!

#  **The True Tale of Lambert and the Grave Hag**

Lambert trudged along the road toward fuck-if-he-cared-what-the-name was town. His back hurt. His ribs hurt. It was getting cold enough that if he didn't make it to the pass soon, he'd not be spending the winter at Kaer Morhen, and everything he had was in one small pack. He hated the keep, but it was safe, and he wasn't a freak for a few months. Eskel would be waiting for him, probably already there and worrying. 

Fucking magistrate of the fucking king. He'd finished that job. It wasn't his fault the damn Magistrate's daughter was the fucking werewolf they'd hired him to kill. Chalk up one more town for witchers to avoid. 

He chuckled bitterly. Fuckers underestimated him and didn't chain him to the wall. Everyone underestimated him. 

Still, he hurt all over. He had no money. No supplies. Not even a coat. The pack and blanket were stolen on his way out of the prison. At least his swords, armor, and potions hadn't been carted off or destroyed yet, so he had a chance of making some coin. He'd reach the town soon. 

His stomach growled. 

Melitele's tits. He should have found the magistrate's lair and made him suffer. Taken what he was owed for the job and enough to make up for the beating and flogging, and his horse. He'd liked that horse. Pure Zerrikanian. Dappled grey coat. Perfect conformation for speed over distance. Agile, gentle, well trained. 

He tramped into town just as a mob boiled out of the tavern, shouting, cursing, demanding action. "Witcher!" rang through the shouting. 

Fuck, he missed his horse. He edged away from the crowd, hoping to put enough distance that running was an option. He wasn't the fastest, but he'd outlast any human peasant that didn't catch him in the first burst.

He bumped a spar of wood sticking out from a cart. Pots rattled, and a woman turned, spotted him. She had long, dark hair held away from her face by a scarf. Her lip was puffy and scabbed over a split, and her left eye was black. Her eyes widened—blue eyes. Piercing, clear blue eyes full of grief, and Lambert froze. She looked exactly as his mother had as when they dragged him away from her. 

She reached toward him, her voice trembling, "Witcher. Please. The monster took my son last night. Please. I don't have much, but anything, _anything_ of mine, I will gladly give if you bring him back to me."

Before he could answer, the crowd turned on him and swarmed around them. Lambert's skin crawled, having people at his back. 

A burly, hairy man bullied his way to the center of the mob. He smiled broadly. "A witcher! Our prayers have been answered!" He held out a coin pouch. "I am Vind, and I am offering two hundred ducats to kill the beast that takes our boys."

Two hundred ducats. _Seriously?_ That was less than seventy crowns. It would be enough to get him home, but if he took this contract, he'd have to handle it in a hurry, or he wouldn't make it to the pass. Dangerous to rush when he didn't know what he was facing. 

The woman moved closer, clutching his arm, tears in her eyes. "The beast holds the boys for weeks. We hear them wailing in the cemetery in the night. My Hris is alive, sir witcher. _Please_."

Lambert folded. He couldn't stand to see women cry. He snatched the coin purse from the man's hand. It stank of the resins used in Kaedwini funerals. "Payment upfront and room and board at the tavern for up to a week."

The villagers were about as useful as they ever were. One of them insisted it was drowner ghosts. _Drowner ghosts_. Lambert shook his head. They reported seeing the monster peering into windows at night, watching the families mourning their losses. They'd lost men trying to enter the cemetery at night to search, so they said.

Lambert's stomach growled again, but he could tell he wasn't getting within sniffing distance of that tavern until he'd made a show of effort. The local cemetery was old. Really fucking old. Scars in the land, subtle ones that a human would walk right by unable to see, spoke of an ancient battle. The old man would probably know which one, but Lambert had never cared to pay much attention to his ramblings about history. The only thing he needed to know was there were a fuck ton of marked graves and probably more bodies in mass graves.

The place would be swarming with wraiths tonight. It was Saovine, though this village wasn't celebrating. He worked his way toward the center of the cemetery and the large mausoleum there. It seemed like the most obvious spot to hide someone. His medallion tingled as he entered, and he traced the energy to protective runes. Lambert shrugged. Made sense in a cemetery this large to ward against wraiths. 

Past the benches and a statue of Melitele, a set of stairs led underground. Of fucking course, there were stairs leading underground. Oil-filled braziers stood at the ready, and a spark of _igni_ lit them. Lambert crouched at the top of the stairs. The room below appeared to be where the caretaker prepared bodies for burial. 

He kept his senses on high alert as he descended. No hints of wraith activity loomed ahead of him. The room was way smaller than he expected. A large shelf of powerfully pungent herbs sat in one corner. The smells jumbled together, making the individual plants and resins hard to identify. They clogged his nose. Why did humans spend so much time with their corpses? Bury them deep or burn them; no need for the theatrics or attempts at preservation. 

The room held little of interest, and the smell made his head hurt. Lamber stumbled to the top of the stairs and sneezed several times, trying to regain his sensory equilibrium. He found blood in three places, three different ages, and marked those areas in his mind as wraith infested. In another location, he found graves claws had opened. Old graves that would never have drawn ghouls. 

Grave hag. Had to be. The kid was already dead. They must have imagined they heard the kids crying. Grave hags rarely progressed to taking living victims, especially with a cemetery like this available to them, but maybe she just liked the taste of boys. Whatever. He'd set a trap for her tomorrow night. He was tired and sore and hungry and had no intention of hanging around a cemetery full of wraiths on Saovine night. 

He walked back to the village and updated them on his findings. It took a long time before he finally managed to extract himself from overly enthusiastic villagers offering unhelpful and contradictory information to finally sit down to a hot meal. Edra—the boy's mother—was especially hard to shake, insisting that this hag must be different, that she knew what they'd heard was true. It hurt to see her cry; brought up all the wrong memories, but it would be suicide to search more with the sun setting. 

The first spoonful of stew was halfway to his mouth when the screams began. He hadn't heard screams like that since the last Trial of the Grasses. With that image in his head and the wails of the woman who looked far too much like his mother competing with the child's in his ears, Lambert dropped the spoon to run toward the wraith infested cemetery. The full moon illuminated his way. 

The sound of the boy's cries neither grew louder nor softer as Lambert drew closer. What sort of monster would magically enhance the sounds of a child's pain to taunt the village? He was missing something vital here, and he couldn't fucking think while the kid cried like that. Wraiths crisscrossed the cemetery. No way could he fight his way through that mess. Not on Saovine. 

He forced himself to stop, center himself, focus on watching the patterns of the wraiths to find a way through without fighting. The kid was down to sniffles and whimpers now, and fuck if that wasn't worse. He knew what it was like to be small and too exhausted to scream anymore. 

"Not enough Vind is ssssso loud? He hiresssss a witcher to kill Grauti?" 

The voice was whispery, sibilant, and like he needed any more hints, set off his medallion. Lambert whirled to face the threat, smoothly drawing his silver sword and casting _quen_ as he did. Adrenaline pushed aside all the aches and weariness. Can't have your mutant killing machines falling to little things like exhaustion, could they? 

Well outside his reach, a large, vaguely human, vaguely female creature stood. It's elongated arms ended with claws as long as his arm. The tongue flicked and wavered, plenty long enough to reach him. 

She laughed, a sound like unoiled hinges. "Little witcher is afraid of Grauti." The tongue flicked out, faster than Lambert could follow, even with his enhanced senses. It snapped beside his ear, not touching the shield. 

He dodged back and heard the screech of a wraith a second before it's icy fingers scraped along his shield, sparking against and draining it. It flickered as he pivoted, slashing at the wraith. It disappeared with a shriek of rage. 

The hag hadn't attacked outright, and the wraith was an immediate threat. He'd have to trust in her less than immediate desire to eviscerate him. He slammed a _yrden_ circle onto the ground just as the wraith reappeared. It slashed him again while he was off-balance from the casting, breaking through the remaining power of his quen and slicing across his back.

He rolled away from it, coming back up to his feet. Sword swinging, he expected the wraith to be on top of him, to be moving, attacking. Instead, his blow cut deep into a motionless, silent wraith. It didn't even scream as it disintegrated into dust. 

Blood trickled down his back. Weakness trembled through his left arm. 

The hag sniffed the air, and Lambert tensed. She was faster than him, had him trapped between her and the wraiths. Fuck. This was it? Cut down by wraiths and a chatty grave hag in a fucking no-where cemetery where no one even knew his name? Just his fucking luck. 

She humphed, one hand on her hip. "Little witcher is ssssslow. Is hurt. Too weak to be of usssse?"

Yeah, all right. Geralt was always extolling the virtue of chatting up monsters that wanted to talk. If she wanted him dead, he was dead. "Just try it. Plenty of fight left in me." ...Maybe he needed to work on that.

"Big wordssss for little witcher." The hag cackled and paced a circle around him. "Grauti wants quiet. Ssssilenccccce. Graveminderssss know. Hundredssss of yearsssss. Thissss placccce for Grauti. A crate of sssspicessss. Ignore empty gravessss. Grauti keepssss the wraithssss in the wallsssss."

"How fucking old are you?"

"I was here before elvessssss. Will be here after humansssss. Follow. Make sure the next caretaker is sssssmarter."

Why the fuck not? It wasn't like his life could get any stranger. The hag led him through the cemetery, her tongue flicking out and paralyzing any wraith that showed interest in them. They reached the mausoleum, and she waved him forward. "Tunnelssss."

"You not coming?"

"No."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Warded. Burnssssss."

Right, the runes he'd found earlier. Fuck. Now he had a cemetery full of wraiths _and_ a weird hag behind him, and whatever was taking the boys in front of him. Fan-fucking-tastic. The interior of the shelf swung into a tunnel, left open by someone. Lambert took a Cat, trying not to think about how fucking strange his life was that he was taking orders from a grave hag. The overpowering, blinding odor of the plants and resins clogged his nose as he got closer. 

Wait. The building was protected from monsters. The smell. Why hadn't he connected the man who offered the coin purse with this place sooner? 

_Vind_. 

The man played him from the moment he walked into town. Offering the coin, luring him in with the one thing that could get him into this cemetery on Saovine, setting the lure before he could rest or eat, the fucker played him, and he fucking fell for it. 

The magical sound enhanced wasn't in effect down here. Tunnels ran off in all directions; some looked like they were tunneled out by vermin. Nekkers, maybe, but the tunnels were old, perhaps as old as the cemetery. Lambert pressed his palms to opposite walls of the first junction and focused all the senses he had working at the moment. The herbs still overpowered his nose. He mapped the tunnel system as far as he was able through vibrations and echoes. 

Movement rustled at the edge of his hearing, beyond what he was able to mentally map. The sounds grew more distinct as he drew closer. He cursed himself and humanity every time he had to stop to feel his way forward through the tunnel system. Death was too good for Vind. Rage boiled through him. He wanted to skin the man alive, to slowly roast him alive, but he thought about Edra and the other families in the village and how much they deserved the chance to destroy this monster. 

Lambert found Vind too late to stop him from hurting the boy. He was putting the lock on the cage he'd stuffed the boy into. Lamber slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. 

Vind looked up, stupid confusion in his expression. "How'd you get through the wraiths?"

"I'm a witcher," Lambert growled. He slammed his heel down on Vind's ankle, grinding the bone into as many shards as he could manage. Vind howled, curling up into a ball. Lambert took care of the scum’s kneecap next, shattering it with a kick of his steel-capped boot. He couldn't drag the shit stain back to the village while caring for the boy. But he could tell the villagers where to find him. 

Lambert looked around the chamber. The boy was naked. The real horror of the place began to sink in. Mannequins—child-sized mannequins with real hair and skin—sat on shelves on one wall. How many kids had the fucker killed? There had to be more than twenty of the dolls. 

Fuck. It wasn't looking good on finding anything for the kid to wear. A cabinet stood in the back corner. "I better not find kid-parts in here,” Lambert spat. “If I do, I'm cutting your dick off and not leaving that honor to the village," he growled at Vind. He threw the door open and sighed with relief. Notebooks. Blankets. Fuck. He recoiled from the smell of Vind on the pile of children's clothes. Lambert flipped open a notebook and slammed it closed. The bastard thought he was an artist.

Lambert stuffed notebooks into his pockets for evidence and shrugged off his jacket. He was still bleeding, but the cloth layers of his armor had kept most of it off the leather. The boy huddled in the back of the space, laying on his side, glassy-eyed and silent. Lambert snapped the lock and slowly opened the cage door. He knelt beside the opening and pushed the jacket toward the boy. "I know it’s too big, but it’ll keep you safe, warm. Hris, your mother sent me. Edra? I'm here to take you to her."

The boy lifted his head and licked his lips. "R-really?" his voice was hoarse, and Lambert wished he had something to give him to drink. 

"Yes. Can you get dressed?"

He tried to sit up but fell back, whimpering. 

"That's all right. I'll get you home. Can I help you?"

Hris bit his lip but nodded. “What’s your name?” The boy asked in a small voice. 

Lambert froze. He hadn’t expected—most people didn’t care. “Lambert.”

Lambert kept his movements slow and careful, pulling the jacket around the boy's shoulders. "I want to wrap you in the blanket and carry you home. Will you let me do that?" No one had ever asked him if he'd _let_ them do something when he was little and hurt, no one except his mother. He'd be damned if he didn't let this kid decide every fucking step of the way. 

"I want my mama. Take me home. Please, please, take me home."

"Yeah, here we go." Lambert wrapped him up quickly and pulled him out of the cage. Even with his left arm not wanting to work right, it was no trouble to cradle the boy against his chest and walk out of the tunnels. He hoped Grauti was still out there, or they'd have to wait for morning in the mausoleum. 

He heard her before he reached the top of the stairs. "Hris. There are monsters out there. I'm going to cover your head."

The boy didn't answer. His eyes were closed. Shit. Lambert listened for his heartbeat. The rhythm was strong and steady. Melitele's tits that scared him. He covered the boy's face anyway before climbing the last few stairs. 

"You have the morsssssel?"

Lambert froze. He couldn't get his sword without dropping the boy.

She laughed. "Why should I eat dissssgussssting fresh meat? Ssssoil marinatessss, presssservessss. Perfect here. Food forever here." She looked over him, appraising. "Come back. Drink Ssssssaovine mead."

"Does it have people in it?"

She made a disgusted noise. "Is _mead_ , little witcher."

*** * ***

"So we went back through the cemetery, with her tonguing wraiths left and right. I gave the kid to his mother, the notebooks to the alderman, and they begged me to go back and guard the crypt to make sure Vind didn't escape with no working legs. And I got totally shitfaced with the grave hag. Woke up the next afternoon with the alderman poking me with a stick. The mothers of the village took their revenge on Vind. The boy survived. They outfitted me for the trip up the mountain. The end." Lambert drained his beer and sank back against Eskel's chest.

Geralt sat his mug down and stared at Lambert. "Yeah, I don't believe a word of that." 

"Believe what you want. It's the fucking truth!" 

"Did _none_ of you listen in your history lessons?" Vesemir called from his chair near the fire. "Does Grauti still put juniper berries in her mead?"

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [ Tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/miahclone/)for Witcher fic-recs, snippets, occasional prompt fills, and just because I love talking about these awesome characters.  
> If you enjoyed my writing and would like to reblog this story, you can [ do so here!](https://miahclone.tumblr.com/post/631550446510784512/the-alchemy-inn-the-true-tale-of-lambert-and-the?is_related_post=1/)


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